What does the 2nd Agile Principle (Welcome Change to Requirements) look like in Action?

Many want to go Agile or claim to be Agile. The question is, are you and will you really align with the Agile values and principles?  To better understand what this means, I dissected the Principles to better discover the intentions behind them and what behaviors they entail. In this article, I expand on the second Principle to better understand what it means and to attempt to model how to marshal supporting evidence that a culture change may be occurring.  

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage is the second Agile principle. From an Agile perspective, you embrace change to increase the chances of delivering value to the customer. You embrace change because you understand that change is necessary as customer needs, market conditions, and general demand change over time. 

Welcoming change implies several qualities. The first is that there is a positive attitude toward change from the team and management. The second is that while change ideas are admitted, they are methodically prioritized based on customer value along with existing requirements. The third is that there is a process that allows prioritized changes to flow without obstruction.

What actions may exhibit “welcoming change to requirements”? Some evidence includes:  

• The PO continually engages with the customer to identify new requirements or changes to existing requirements. 
• A methodical review of the change idea occurs to determine the priority amongst the existing requirements.
• No person or process restricts incoming change ideas. 
• The backlog is continually refined and reprioritized. 
• Increment Planning and/or Sprint Planning is applied to introduce the newly prioritized requirements. 
• Continuous customer engagement via customer visits and sprint reviews are applied. 

It is up to you to determine what supporting evidence will highlight that a culture change is occurring. It is worth experimenting with this as it will help you better understand and embrace the Agile principles. The ultimate question, if you really believe in this principle is, do you welcome change?

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To learn about what evidence might look like to support the 1st Agile Principle (aka, Satisfying Customer with Valuable Software), consider reading: https://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2023/09/many-want-to-go-agile-or-claim-to-be.html

Who really is the Customer?

As straightforward as this question may seem, it engenders a wide variety of answers that tend to be murky. The real answer is clear. A customer is someone who has a choice on what to buy, external to the company, and a choice of where to buy it.  As it relates to your company, a customer pays you with money to help you stay in business by purchasing your products.  For these simple factors, engaging the customer is of utmost importance.

Most companies like to say that "customer is king" and some indeed are.  But if you ask those in a company when was the last time they actually talked to customers, many say rarely or never. As bizarre as it may sound, there are challenges that companies have in relation to engaging with customers.

The first challenge is that the term “Customer” is being applied to a number of people “internal” to the company who are not really Customers. This means they don’t pay and bring revenue to the company. Instead, they are really internal stakeholders or partners. When you incorrectly title someone a customer when they are not, then when you apply Agile, it will not really be customer value-driven as you are not using actual customer feedback to drive toward customer value.

The second challenge is that some companies do not really engage their customers to get their feedback to understand what they find valuable.  This is often for two reasons. The first is that there is pretend or arrogant certainty from those in the company on what they think is customer value so they don’t really think they need to engage with customers. The second is that the company optimizes for sticking with the plan over adapting to customer feedback. In both cases, this prevents the opportunity of gaining valuable customer feedback. 

The key to engaging customers is to gain their valuable customer input and feedback.  The input and feedback should be the basis for driving a majority of your decisions and setting the direction of the product. As you look to build a customer value-driven engine within your enterprise, the customer or more specifically, customer feedback, is the “driver” that steers the engine of customer value.  The more you incorporate the customer at the center of your company, the more likely you will have satisfied customer and greater business success.

Learn if you incorporate customer feedback with the Empty Customer Chairs technique at: 

http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2016/03/empty-customer-chairs-illustrating.html

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In your Business, what are you Optimizing for?

Do you optimize for your customers or for the ease of following a plan or process? Many companies like to say that they optimize for their customers.  However, upon a closer look, you catch the scent that some companies optimize for their own internal processes or plan instead.  When you change the plan, it can disrupt schedules and make it less clear on what will be built for the release, as things tend to evolve.  It will also force re-planning, which can impact dependencies and staffing of the work. One of the Agile values states “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” In other words, Agile advocates the importance of interactions with customer.   

One example of optimizing for a plan or process (instead of the customer) is purposefully avoiding customer feedback because it can force you to adjust the plan which can be messy. Another example that I’ve witnessed several times is when actual customer feedback is captured that indicates a change to customer needs, yet the feedback is ignored since sticking the plan is an easier path.  This is a sign that the organization may be optimizing for their internal processes or the comfort of sticking to the initial plan. When paired with management objectives of sticking to a schedule, this often leads to a mindset of avoiding any change. Does this sound familiar?  Be careful not to fall into this trap.  It can be very easy to do.  It can lead to losing touch with the customer and poor business results.

When you optimize for the customer (external), it will often lead to change.  One of the Agile principles states that you should “Welcome changing requirements”.  The more you interact with your customers (which you should be doing), the more they will provide thoughts or feedback on what they really want. This, in turn, leads to adapting the plan to the great benefit of building something the customer wants.  The net result is an increase in better business results. 

There are several ways to gauge if you are optimizing for the customer or for your internal plan or processes.  A first way is to identify how often you actually engage with customers (and how many) in ceremonies like demos and sprint reviews. Engaging with many customers indicates you are optimizing for the customer while none or few indicates a leaning toward the internal plan.  A second way is to capture how often you actually incorporate customer feedback.  Methodically incorporating feedback indicates that you are optimizing for the customer while incorporating little feedback may indicate a leaning toward following the plan.  As you look around your project, product, or company, ask yourself, who are you optimizing for?  Who should you be optimizing for?       

What really is an MVP in an Agile World?

There is often a bit of misunderstanding of what is an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in an Agile context (and I contend in any context).  MVPs are meant to provide the minimal functionality or feature set that will be useful to customers.  However, to attempt to define the minimal set up front means that you know what the customer wants from the start.  How often do you know what the customer wants at the beginning?

Instead, think of an MVP as an opportunity to learn what the customer wants, loves, and needs.  It should neither be fixed nor should you be certain of what it is.  Instead it should be considered an evolving concept from which you learn what the customer wants over time based on continuous feedback.  What mindset shifts might you have to make in order to adapt to what an MVP is in an Agile world? 

The first Agile mindset shift is the MVP is a draft.  Defining an final MVP upfront is akin to big-up-front planning and claiming certainty.  Instead, you hypothesize what the minimal set of features might be as a draft, and then have a mindset and practices where you validate your assumptions and hypothesis.  You start with an adaptable idea of what might be minimal and valuable to the customer. The moment you attempt to succinctly define the set of features, you are doing a disservice to your customer. 

The second Agile mindset shift is that customer feedback is key to evolving the MVP.  It is an opportunity to learn what the customer wants, loves, and needs.  If you want your MVP to align closely to customer value, you must include continuous customer feedback loops when working on an MVP.  These can take the form of customer demos or hands-on sessions.  Customer feedback can start as early as when you are hypothesizing what is an MVP and must be part of evolving the MVP to gain a strong inspect-and-adapt mindset with the inspect coming from the customer.  Eric Reis writes that an MVP “allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”  Customer feedback is the cornerstone to validated learning and establishing an MVP. 

So who really determines what is the MVP?  If you think the answer is you, your management, or your team, then maybe its time to Reduce your certainty and Ready your mind with the Agile mindset, discovery mindset, and Feedback loops. The right answer is the customer determines what is the MVP in Agile.  The more closely you align with customers throughout the effort, the more likely you will have an MVP that is considered valuable to the customer.          

The Forgotten Agile Role – the Customer

Many Agile implementations tend to focus on the roles inside an organization – the Scrum Master, Product Owner, Business Owner, Agile Team, Development Team, etc.  These are certainly important roles in identifying and creating a valuable product or service.  However, what has happened to the Customer role?  I contend the Customer is the most important role in the Agile world.  Does it seem to be missing from many of the discussions?

While not always obvious, the Customer role should be front-and-center in all Agile methods and when working in an Agile context.  You must embrace them as your business partner with the goal of building strong customer relationships and gathering their valuable feedback.  Within an Agile enterprise, while customers should be invited to Sprint Reviews or demonstrations and provide feedback, they should really be asked to provide feedback all along the product development journey from identification of an idea to delivery of customer value.

Let's remind ourselves of the importance of the customer.  A customer is someone who has a choice on what to buy and where to buy it. By purchasing your product, a customer pays you with money to help your company stay in business.  For these factors, engaging the customer is of utmost importance.  Customers are external to the company and can provide the initial ideas and feedback to validate the ideas into working products.  Or if your customer is internal, are you treating them as part of your team and are you collecting their feedback regularly?

As you look across your Agile context, are customers one of your major Agile roles within your organization?  Are they front and center?  Are customers an integral part of your Agile practice?  Are you collecting their valuable feedback regularly?  If not, it may be time to do so.  

Four Anti-Patterns impacting Customer Value

Value is in the eye of the beholder.  Smart people will say that the beholder is the customer. While in most companies there will be a similar saying to the “customer is king”, some have lost their way and have somehow forgotten the importance of customer and their feedback.  The result is organizational anti-patterns that impede successfully getting to customer value. There are a number of anti-patterns on why this occurs and below are four: 

• Known as Pretend Certainty anti-pattern, this is believing that you can pretend to know with certainty what the customer wants upfront.  The danger: the consequence of limiting options and being blind to customer feedback to shape product direction.  
• Known as No Room at the Innovation Inn anti-pattern, this is focusing primarily on driving efficiencies through cost cutting and high resource utilization.  The danger: the unintended consequence of a lesser focus on the customer with little room to innovate and adapt. 
• Known as Sub-Optimizing for Comfort anti-pattern, this is sub-optimizing for the comfort of having a well-established plan and set of well-defined processes.  The danger: the consequence of restricting change at the expense of adapting to customer needs.  
• Known as The Few and the Missing anti-pattern, this is engaging few to represent the whole.  The danger: the consequence of understanding customer pool, ignoring potential customers, and missing customer feedback to shape product direction. 

When you are a start up, you realize the importance of being customer value driven because if customers don’t buy the product, then your start-up goes under. Because of this and their small size, most start-ups will stay very close to the customer or potential customer.  When companies become larger, there is a greater chance these anti-patterns appear.  More process and more controls are often put into place and unfortunately this leads to restricting change.  A company may sub-optimize for their own processes and plans that distances them from their customers.  

The question is, do you see any of these anti-patterns within your organization that impact your ability to achieve customer value?  Avoid the poor “aim of the anti-pattern’.  Instead, engage with your customers and use their feedback to help you hit the customer value target!

For more information on the topic of Customer Value, consider reading the following articles:

• Dangers of Certainty in Realizing Customer Value
• How an Agile Customer Feedback Vision can lead to Customer Value